Mike Foltynewicz Falters, Atlanta Braves Fall To Cardinals 10-0

Braves Foltynewicz struggled greatly in his second game ever at SunTrust Park as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Braves 10-0.

This was not a pretty one.

After Atlanta Braves Starting pitcher Mike Foltynewicz‘s last three starts in which he totaled 20 IP, 18 K with an ERA of 1.80, there was a lot of reason to be excited to see him take the mound for this game.

Folty clearly didn’t have his best stuff and the Cards jumped all over him for seven runs in just four innings.

The struggles began as early as the second batter of the game when Jose Martinez hit a line-drive double to left, which was later brought home by a Jedd Gyorko double to center.

The Cardinals were hitting everything hard, and even the last out of the inning was a rocket line-drive that required a robbery by Matt Kemp to prevent extra bases:

Folty continued to struggle to get outs in the second as he gave up a single, a double and a walk in the inning, however, he did not give up a run due to more CF wizardry by Ender Inciarte:

Ender’s heads-up play to act as if he had the ball tracked down only to let it fly over his head and bounce off the wall caused Aledmys Diaz to only advance to third instead of easily scoring. Inciarte, unfortunately, couldn’t do much to save Foltynewicz in the third inning as he gave up four runs in the frame.

A Carpenter walk, followed by a Gyorko single and a Yadier Molina sac-bunt left two runners in scoring position with only one out and then the Cardinals capitalized. Aledmys Diaz doubled to bring in both runs and then the real stinger– Tommy Pham two-run homer to center to make it 5-0.

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It was only Tommy Pham‘s second major-league AB of the season, with the first being a double in the inning prior. With both Dexter Fowler and Stephen Piscotty getting hurt in the Cardinals’ game against the Brewers last night, the Cards had to pull Pham up from AAA-Memphis for today’s’ game.

Folty’s laborious outing ended after he got out of the fourth, an inning which contained another home run, this time a two-run shot by Matt Carpenter which brought Kolten Wong home. Overall, it’s pretty hard to find a positive to take from this game for Folty.

One interesting part of the game is that Sam Freeman made his Braves’ debut in the 7th inning and gave up zero earned runs while striking two. Freeman, a 29 year-old left-handed reliever, was called up yesterday to provide bullpen help for the team.

The Offense… Also Struggled

Tonight’s game against the Cards was dissimilar to some of the games against the Mets and Brewers from the past week in which the Braves offense bailed the bad pitching out (or at least made it close).

There were a couple of individual positives as Inciarte collected three hits (including a triple) and Freddie and T-Flow both walked twice each, but base runners were unable to collect on each other and the Braves failed to cash in any.

Lance Lynn wasn’t necessarily doing anything special to fool the Braves, but overall the batters all just had bad games (outside of Ender, of course). In fact, Lynn wasn’t even sporting masterful control as both of Tyler Flowers‘ walks were HBPs on the elbow and he also had some other pitches that were pretty far inside as well:

Thankfully, a loss by double-digits only counts as one loss and the Braves have a chance to rebound tomorrow vs. the Cardinals again as they send Mike Leake to the mound to face Julio Teheran.

Next: Atlanta Braves Flashback Friday

Notable Stat-Lines:

Mike Foltynewicz: 4 IP, 9 H, 2 BB, 7ER, 4 K

Lance Lynn: 6 IP, 4 H, 2 BB, 0 ER, 2 HBP, 6 K

Ender Inciarte: 3-4, 3B

Dansby Swanson: ends his 10-game on-base streak after he went 0-4